1. purepedantry
  2. ScienceBlogs Must-Read: Nisbet on Framing in Terms of Economic Competitiveness

ScienceBlogs Must-Read: Nisbet on Framing in Terms of Economic Competitiveness

By purepedantry on August 13, 2007.

If you haven't read this post by Matthew Nisbet at Framing Science, you really, really should. It shows how framing scientific issues in terms of jobs and economic competitiveness is much more likely to pass funding bills:

As I've noted here many times, major funding initiatives for science are mostly likely to be successful in winning support from policymakers under conditions where they can be exclusively defined in terms of economic competitiveness and growth. If opponents are unable to recast elements of the proposal in terms of public accountability (funding in the public vs private interest) or elements of the funding bill in terms of morality (specific to stem cell, reproductive research etc) then a bill is most likely to pass.

Read the whole thing.

Tags
Funding
Other People's Work

More like this

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Framing spinning
I don't like getting involved in internecine warfare, least of all amongst my SciBlings. But a recent OpEd in WaPo by two fellow bloggers I admire, Matt Nisbet of Framing Science and Chris Mooney of The Intersection prompts me to set fingers to keyboard. It is Richard Dawkins that provoked it. Good…
Rove's Stem Cell Deceit
When Karl Rove told a Denver newspaper that Bush would exercise his first veto of the stem cell bill a couple weeks ago, he included one big whopper in his claim: Recent studies, he said, show that researchers "have far more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells." This is a…
Your Feedback Needed: Government of Canada Launches Review of Federal Support for Fundamental Science
One of the key faults of the Harper Conservatives' science policy was their emphasis on applied research to the detriment of basic, curiosity driven research. Obviously there needs to be a balance between any government's approach to those two kinds of research, neither polar opposite is…
Government funding of studies you don't agree with
I've not commented on the whole stem cell controversy. Though I follow the literature (and the news), others are much better-versed in the science (and the politics) than I am, so I've left it to them to comment on both aspects of the unfolding story. However, I saw this comment over at Framing…